Country music's Dierks Bentley opening a bar on Lower Broadway

Country music artist Dierks Bentley is opening a namesake bar in the most logical place: downtown Nashville's Lower Broadway tourist hub, whose honky-tonks and boot stores provide the postcard shot of the "Music City" brand and the city's surging tourism business.

Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row will open in early 2017 at 400 Broadway. On Jan. 7, an investment group led by Michael Hayes and Brandon Kuvara, principals of developer C.B. Ragland Co., bought the building and announced they had signed a lease with restaurant company Riot Hospitality Group, which will operate Bentley's bar.

Bentley's bar and restaurant will feature more than 50 beers on tap and three stages for live music, plus a rooftop deck. This is Bentley's third such establishment; the other two are in his home state of Arizona.

“(Lower Broadway) is home of the bars where I cut my teeth night after night, usually running up a beer tab bigger than the tips I made covered," Bentley said in a statement issued Thursday. "It’s pretty full-circle to think that we’re getting the chance to open one of my bars, backing right up to the Ryman Auditorium, where other artists will look back on as the place they got their start too.”

The four-story, brick building at 400 Broadway is 106 years old and contains 14,500 square feet. The purchase price was not immediately disclosed or available in public records.

For the past three years, the building has been home to Tatyana's Boutique. For the two decades before that, the building was home to Gruhn Guitars.

"We have loved being here the last three years, but have found with the significant growth in the tourist market, it has been difficult to serve our local customer base," Jan Glaser, founder of Tatyana's, said in a statement. "We hope to find a new location soon and look forward to a strong future in Nashville."

The sellers were Ruble and Brenda Sanderson, who paid $4.8 million to buy the building three years ago.